One last read, keep and burn. Or is it? I realise how psychologically edifying it is to use this process to revisit the past, learn from it, deal with it, integrate it. The Theatre of the Self project is about writing the self, editing and coming to terms with our stories.
In 2017, I read, kept and burnt 30 years of diaries. I choose a special place I felt safe and relaxed to ‘perform’ the task over 30 days. It was wonderful…traumatic…and cathartic. The process excavated the self and the stories we create about ourselves – often to survive. it can be a unique way of connecting to parts of ourselves and enable us to re-perform the self differently.
So on Thursday 10th September 2020 my 2010 diary was added to the 1977-2009 diaries …..for reasons that will become clear in the Theatre of the Self publishing project.
Coming soon, thanks to funding from Cultivator Cornwall, Arts Council England, Cornwall Council and European Union, the project is a unique collection of five small books that are simultaneously art, project documentation, theory and interactive mental health diaries.